Friday, June 15, 2007

Army Wants To Enlist Illegal Aliens Quickly As Recruitment Falls

DefenseLink News Article: Officials Hope to Rekindle Interest in Immigration Bill Provision

The obvious argument in favor of this proposal is that the immigrants will have earned the right to citizenship by their willingness to Put On The Uniform And Serve Their Country(TM). I have two issues with this:

  1. They will most likely not be serving "their country," i.e., the land and the people. They will be serving the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex, which profits handsomely, in both money and power, from provoking and continuing quarrels between nations.
  2. As they will have learned to closely associate Big Government (public assistance, public schools, public hospitals, G.I. Bill, etc.) with their own economic self-interest, they will not be reluctant to turn their guns on American citizens if ordered to do so.

The historic precedents are there. The Whiskey Rebellion affected the entire Western United States, but only in Western Pennsylvania did the Federal government have a cadre of wealthy bureaucrats willing to collect taxes. Similarly, when Abraham Lincoln went to war against the South, on behalf of his agenda of  subsidies to politically-favored industries, high protective tariffs, and  Federal control of the money supply, he recruited foreigners as mercenaries, with promises of citizenship and wealth if they would just shoot some of the native-born.

Once again, freedom will be squeezed between welfare and warfare. Will we ever learn? Do we even care?


technorati tags:, , , , , , ,

Blogged with Flock

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Feds

ChroniclesMagazine.org » Feds

Professor Clyde Wilson, pithy and eloquent as usual.


technorati tags:, , , ,

Blogged with Flock

Here are two excellent articles on the current "immigration reform" fiasco:

Dobbs: Give it a rest, Mr. President - CNN.com

Chain of Fools: Nepotism as Immigration Policy


Unfortunately, both authors overlook the considerable role of welfare in the current pattern of immigration. On net, today's immigrants -- legal and illegal -- are tax consumers, not tax producers. Their families receive tax-funded education, health care, food, housing and general assistance subsidies. They have become a powerful voting and lobbying bloc for increased subsidies, which translates (in any language) into higher taxes and bigger government.

"But we need them to do the jobs Americans refuse to do." Well, if starvation were the alternative to working, I'll bet more Americans would be interested in those jobs. But we provide another way out for the indolent and the self-indulgent, at the expense of the industrious and the thrifty, and we call it "progressive" and "compassionate." And it's not just "menial" jobs that Americans are turning down in favor of life on the dole.

Ending the Welfare State, including that great, sacred cow known as "public education," would go a long way toward making open borders a feasible proposition. It also would put Americans back to work, restore the family to its proper place in society, return decency and civility to our communities, free up private funds to provide meaningful assistance to the truly needy, and restore the value of education. As an added bonus, ending the Welfare State would choke the life out of its symbiote, the Warfare State.

End Welfare. Do it now, for the children.





technorati tags:, , , , ,

Blogged with Flock